I enjoyed this ep. Thought that Girard's ideas were significantly more creative and compelling than those of most of the intellectuals and pseudointellectuals discussed on the show. Our hosts and guest were, as usual, nuanced and erudite.

However, as an anthropologist, I have a complaint: the hosts repeatedly refer to Girard's theory as anthropological. Perhaps it is, in the very loosest sense, but in a much more concrete and important sense it is anything but. Perhaps in Frazier's day it was considered methodologically sound to read a few (European/Near Eastern) myths and posit a theory of How Humans Are. Today, not so much.

The hosts approach Girard's work as philosophy, but as an anthropologist I see an empirical question: is the scapegoat myth really a human universal or near-universal? Is Christianity really unique in asserting the innocence of the scapegoat? If the answer is no, then that seems to be a serious blow to his theory. Although I have papers to grade and dinner to cook and thus will not be researching this tonight, I strongly suspect that the answer is no.*

I understand that this show's purpose is to engage with conservative thought, not to debunk it. But serious engagement should include kicking the tires of the basic premises and factual claims, especially when they're as dubious as Girard's.

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*This also leaves to the side some serious theoretical issues with the appropriateness of seeking universal, acultural interpretations of culturally-specific myths -- a project which has been in serious disrepute among American anthropologists for pretty much the entire history of the discipline.